GAINING GROUND:

ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ANIMALS

>From the Week in Review section of the New York Times:

At Last, a Company Takes PETA Seriously
July 25, 2004
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.  

ANIMAL-RIGHTS activists have a sense of zeal that makes them compare themselves to abolitionists, suffragists and  civil-rights marchers.   But even though millions of Americans have at least dabbled  with vegetarianism, the activists are rarely taken seriously by  food companies or federal regulators when they ask people  nicely to stop eating meat or wearing leather or going to the circus. 

And when some lash out, the whole movement is tainted by association. "Guerrilla activism" can be as relatively harmless  as throwing red paint on women in fur coats, as risky as  opening the cages in mink ranches or as violent as making  death threats to a scientist who uses cats to study AIDS.   One group, the Animal Liberation Front, which advocates bombing and is believed to have burned down a horse slaughterhouse, is considered a domestic terrorist organization by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.   But last week, another group, People for the Ethical Treatment  of Animals, managed to be taken seriously - not by being  violent but because of wanton violence on the other side.  The group, known as PETA, has fought a long legal battle  with Kentucky Fried Chicken, trying to push it to give its  chickens larger cages, stop forcing the birds to grow so fast  hat their legs  collapse and to gas them so they die painlessly  before their throats are slit.  

PETA released videotapes from a hidden camera planted  by a member who worked undercover in a West Virginia slaughterhouse for eight months. Instead of recording the normal unpleasantries of factory farming, like chickens with  their beaks burned off or unwanted male chicks ground up  alive into fertilizer, it recorded wanton cruelty: workers  stomping on live chickens, and flinging dozens into a wall.  The investigator said his co-workers tore the head off a  chicken to write graffiti, strangled a chicken with a latex glove,  squeezed birds till they exploded and committed "hundreds"  of other acts of cruelty.  

This time, the corporate response was rapid. Yum Brands,  the parent company of the KFC Corporation, called the tape  appalling, sent in inspectors and told the plant, owned by the  Pilgrim's Pride Corporation, to clean up its act or lose its  contract. Pilgrim's Pride fired 11 workers and managers and  said it would make everyone at its 25 plants sign promises to  treat animals humanely. PETA said it wanted people involved  to be prosecuted and asked Congress to change the Humane  Methods of Slaughter Act to include poultry. It was supported  by the Humane Society, which has eight million members and  calls itself "a mainstream voice for animals."   Groups that do not consider themselves mainstream were pleasantly surprised by the corporate response.   Paul Shapiro, campaign director for Compassion Over Killing,  said the usual response to undercover footage was denial.  Recently, when one of his teams trespassed on a Maryland  egg farm to film dying hens, he said, the farm claimed the  footage was forged - though his members had documented  their presence at the site by filming a Global Positioning System  indicator, a morning newspaper and some of the farm's mail. 

Most Americans do not want to know too much about how their  food is made, Mr. Shapiro said, so mere proof that animals are  abused rarely makes the news. "There has to be a criminal  conviction, or consumer fraud or corporate hypocrisy, or a great  personal story," he said. Fraud made the egg farm newsworthy,  he said - its eggs carried "Animal Care Certified" labels. 

Even a journalist covering animal rights can struggle to be taken seriously. This one was kidded for exposing "Kentucky Fried Chicken's Abu Ghraib.''   PETA is a champion at getting attention. Donna Marie Artuso,  vice president of the National Association for Biomedical  Research, which defends the use of animals in laboratories,
said that Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's founder, had  "never condemned violent behavior by animal extremists."   PETA is best known for its comic, sexualized approach to acts  that it sees no humor in. It recruits nude supermodels for "I'd  Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" billboards. Its GoVeg.com  Web site has films of bikini-clad Playmates wrestling in tofu.   Ms. Newkirk says she want to cut through the silence that surrounds each animal's frightened life journey from egg to plate.  "I've stood on slaughter floors for chickens, for horses in Texas  and for dogs in Taiwan," she said. "They all smell the blood.  They all have eyes as wide as saucers. They're all asking  'Why is this happening to me?' What we're asking is that they  render them senseless first. Why is that such a challenging idea?"   To Submit a Letter to the Editor: letters@nytimes.com Please mention the title of the article : " At Last, a Company Takes  PETA  Seriously " It is a column called "Gaining Ground" Include your full name, address and telephone number.